The
Trump administration has forked over more than $62 million — taxpayer
cash that was supposed to be earmarked for struggling American farmers —
to a massive meatpacking company owned by a couple of corrupt Brazilian
brothers.

The
Department of Agriculture cut a contract in January to purchase $22.3
million worth of pork from plants operated by JBS USA, a Colorado-based
subsidiary of Brazil’s JBS SA, which ranks as the largest meatpacker in
the world.

The
bailout raised eyebrows from industry insiders at the time, as it was
sourced from a $12 billion program meant for American farmers harmed by
President Trump’s escalating trade war with China and other countries.

But
previously undisclosed purchase reports obtained by the Daily News this
week reveal the administration has since issued at least two more
bailouts to JBS, even as Trump’s own Justice Department began
investigating the meatpacker, whose owners are Joesley and Wesley
Batista — two wealthy brothers who have confessed to bribing hundreds of
top officials in Brazil.

Both brothers have spent time in jail over the sweeping corruption scandal.

Local
prosecutors rescinded the Batistas’ plea deals last year after accusing
them of withholding evidence. The seedy brothers aren’t allowed to
leave Brazil as their complex cases go to court.

The
Justice Department, meanwhile, is probing JBS for possible violations
in the U.S. of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to filings
in an unrelated court case reviewed by The News. Reuters
reported in December that Justice Department investigators interviewed
the Batistas in Brazil late last year as part of that investigation.

Nonetheless,
Trump’s Agriculture Department issued $14.5 million in bailout cash for
pork products from JBS in February and another $25.6 million earlier
this month, totaling more than $62.4 million, according to the purchase
reports.

The
sheer size of the payouts stoked outrage from industry watchdogs, who
question how subsidizing a deep-pocketed, Brazilian-owned company would
help farmers in the American heartland.

“Why
is the USDA bailing out plants operated by JBS, the largest meatpacker
in the world, with a program designed to help domestic companies and
producers under economic duress?” said Tony Corbo, a lobbyist at Food
& Water Watch, noting that the meat giant reported a net income of
$273 million for the first quarter of 2019.

Moreover, JBS appears to have benefited from the trade tensions between Beijing and Washington that the bailouts are supposed to mitigate.

The
company’s exports to China ballooned to more than 24% in 2018, compared
to less than 21% the previous year, according to public records,
raising questions about the need for the Trump subsidy.

“This company does not seem to be hurting,” Corbo said.

By
comparison, a similar Trump bailout to Virginia-based Smithfield Foods,
which is owned by a Chinese firm, was cancelled last year amid pushback
from members of Congress that money meant for American farmers was
ending up in the hands of foreigners.

JBS
declined to comment beyond a statement it issued in January saying
that, despite being foreign owned, it is “proud to partner with U.S.
family farmers and ranchers, helping to create economic opportunity in
hundreds of small, rural towns.”

Democrats
voiced outrage at the fact that the administration is subsidizing a
foreign-owned company controlled by admitted crooks.

“It
is clear the president is not the least bit knowledgeable about trade
policy, nor aware of the chaos his failed approach has caused‚” said
Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who introduced a bill earlier this year
restricting the administration’s bailouts to American-owned companies.

“We
now know that tens of millions of these dollars went to large,
multinational corporations — including Brazilian-owned JBS — who are
racking up profits while family farmers face collapse. That is
outrageous.”

In
addition to payment restrictions, DeLauro’s bill would require the
Agriculture Department release explanations for its bailouts.

“Their incompetence and lack of transparency has shown that they cannot be trusted to get this right,” she said.

A
spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment. The White
House referred to the Agriculture Department, which also declined to
comment.

The
Agriculture Department has not explained its thinking in bailing out
JBS, and it’s unclear whether the administration was aware of the
company’s corrupt history before issuing the payments.

What is known is that the administration was alerted to scandals swirling about JBS over a year before the first bailout.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue testifies during a House Agriculture Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington in February. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

In
a June 2017 letter addressed to Trump, Agriculture Secretary Sonny
Perdue and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, farm trade group R-CALF
called on the Justice Department to investigate JBS over possible
corrupt business practices in the U.S.

“From
unlawfully securing loans to abusing pension funds to selling tainted
beef to bribing government officials to violating Amazon rainforest
protection laws to insider trading, the list of inexcusable conduct that
JBS allegedly committed is incomprehensible,” R-CALF wrote in the
letter.

“The
fact that JBS was allowed to build its political and economic monopoly
in the United States with impunity raises the specter that decisions
regarding JBS, at nearly every level of government, were based on
inappropriate considerations.”

The
JBS bailouts have gained renewed significance in light of the
administration’s collapsing trade talks with China and Trump’s repeated
pledges to help American farmers.

Trump
maintains China will pay for the tariffs he’s imposing on the country’s
exports to the U.S., even as his own top economic adviser, Larry
Kudlow, said in an interview last weekend that American consumers will
have to cover much of the bill.

China has responded to Trump’s tariffs with retaliatory levies on American exports, harming American farmers of soybean and other crops. Many of those farmers are relying on federal bailouts to stay afloat.

Including
the JBS bailouts, the administration doled out $11 billion in relief
payments to farmers hurt in the trade war last year.

Trump said earlier this week that more aid is on the way.

“Our
great Patriot Farmers will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of what
is happening now,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “The Farmers have been
‘forgotten’ for many years. Their time is now!”